The Reluctant Matchmaker

Well I am back again after a long break. No, I Didn't stop reading all these years, just stopped reviewing them apart from some on Good reads. But this year's resolve is to start this blog again. And here I am...

Well the first book I read in 2019, is The reluctant matchmaker by Shobhan Bantwal. The premise is pretty much set in Amerika as we desis call it, with  protagonist being second generation American - Indian.

Now this is how book fared for me-

Plot - With female protagonist(Meena Shenoy) interested in male, and our hero being so dumb to ask her to find a bride for him, this could have made for really intriguing plot but alas writer was too lazy to put depth in it. He could have easily carved pun in this extremely predictable story but he missed it.

Primary Characters - Well I almost can say this was one protoganist story as our hero missed any kind of character building here. Remember one iconic male character that resists female protagonist as he was too dangerous for her kind. That was Edward to our Bella and it was Vampire ~Human love story. Our hero here uses same convulated logic that  he is not good for our female protagonist due to his gigantic build and in his own words, " Any Kind of physical relationship with me will be death of you"😂 and "Can you honestly see a man over two hundred pounds making love to a doll like you,"🤔 well with male protagonist having such harebrained logic , it was difficult to accept him as CEO of a software firm in US.

In any normal book, I would have dismissed Meena's character too, but her being only one to cling to, I feel that writer should have carved the characters better.

Secondary Characters - Many a times in book, I felt that writer just made a checklist of requirements of story, and implemented all in this one without bothering to check whether there was requirement for the story or not. For example most of romantic Mills and boons type of books have one evil vamp, here we had one lady called Gargi Bansal, which was there is three to four instances in book. Our female protagonist says she is evil, and we have to accept she is evil. She does almost nothing in entire book. Why she was there is big mystery. Also there were bunch of other odd Characters and a sub-plot of Meena's brother loving a Muslim that were utterly unnecessary and did nothing to the story.
The second character of Akka that was sort of Grand mother of Meena and actual match maker is end also was a imposed on us. As if writer thought there is need of one sassy Grand Mother and there she is available in out story. Just like we have seen in many movies based on NRIs life. Replace here with any Good friend / Neighbour/ collegues and then also you won't miss any thing in book. That is all because writer was too lazy to build his characters or to give them any depth.

Memorable quotes - None

My Verdict -Opportunity wasted due to lazy writing

Best to read - I read this one when I was there at some place and needed to read something but couldn't afford to invest my much attention in that. I call it Passive Reading. Reluctant Matchmaker doesn't deserve undivided attention.

Availability - Hardcopy at Amazon and Flipkart